Al-Badr (Kashmir)

al-Badr is an Islamic fundamentalist group in Kashmir which was formed by the Pakistani ISI in 1998. It was encouraged by the ISI to act independently from its previous umbrella group, Hizbul Mujahideen, alongside whom its members had previously fought in the Afghan Civil War as allies of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In 2002, its leader Bakht Zameen declared jihad against US forces in Afghanistan, and, that same year, he demanded that all female policewomen in Kashmir quit their jobs. The group saw Kashmir as the gateway to India, and that its goal was the liberation of Muslims in India after occupying Kashmir. al-Badr grew to have 200 members, 120 of whom were foreign fighters (mostly Pakistani), and al-Badr and Lashkar-e-Taiba were the only two Kashmiri groups to employ suicide squads.